Tag: ipod

Edit: Forgot to include noise-cancelling / in-ear / tin can headphones as an option. Thanks George! Jump to the choices if you want to skip the blah.

Another update: I really must strongly recommend noise-blocking earbuds or similar. I bought a pair which have rounded soft material on the bud – essentially a cross between an earplug and an earbud. They were relatively cheap (about Â£8 from Argos), and the difference is substantial. They claim 30dB reduction or such, I don’t know whether that is true, but I can say that for many situations 40% volume is now sufficient. They do take a little getting used to, but once you use them you won’t go back – and your ears will thank you. Happy listening!

…or as I like to call it “the place of Temptation, so tempting it requires a capital ‘t'”.

So I moseyed into the Apple Store, like I said I would. Pricing of the iPod Classic is in-line with the online Apple Store – Â£189. I wasn’t able to talk them down from that price as such; instead they let me know that they offer a 10% trade in, bringing the total to Â£170 ish. The guy in the store said the final price would be Â£161, and if they want to change me that that’s fine. I have student discount through my uni for the online store, but it no longer applies to music players, just Apple’s line of computers. Actually, the new MacBook is very steeply discounted (just over Â£110 off) which really, REALLY tests my willpower.

Now, the Geniuses upstairs in the store may be able to do something with my hard drive. I don’t know what they would charge for data recovery, and so I’m not sure if I’d be willing to pay; especially when I’m not sure of everything that’s on there. I think I’ll do my best puppy dog eyes when I go, and see if they at least offer to tell me what is on there for free.

Well, it’s not really a tale, as a tale implies length. More of a cautionary anecdote… or cautionary aside. All right, a cautionary mentioned-in-passing.

I had intended to fix my iPod’s screen tonight. I’ve previously replaced a broken laptop screen, which has plenty of tricky, footery bits. However, in my attempt, I broke it completely. My humble, 4 or 5 year old player at least played music before… Now it just spins up the drive, has a quiet think to itself, then collapses into a sobbing heap on the floor.

I don’t want to put people off DIY repair, its possible to do. The screens are only like Â£10 ish. It’s not really that hard, even if the cables are footery, incompliant wee buggers at times. But it is very easy to mess up, especially if you don’t take care.

Also, really fucking important point here: no matter how confident you are of your repair skills, BACK DATA THE HELL UP BEFORE YOU START. Since the device was doubling as my portable hard drive, and since I’m occasionally a dribbling fool, I lost some important things. Mainly bookmarks from my portable Firefox installation and some documents I’d digitised. And some stuff I don’t actually remember putting on there, but believe me, it’s there. Or was. Or still is, just in inaccessible form.

Serves me right for not having a backup script for removable media in place. I will do that just as soon as I procure my replacement. I’ll mosey over to the Apple store tomorrow and see if I can’t haggle their price down from ridiculous to merely hideously profitable. If I can, then comes the act of restoring all my music and data. Joy of joys.